Prompt : There's this scene in my head and I hope you want to write it. Haymitch and Effie looking at photos from Effie's childhood. I imagine Capitol people to take tons of photos of their children and maybe one photo album made it through the rebellion. :))

Boxes of Memories

His house was full of boxes and Haymitch didn't know how he felt about that.

They were everywhere : in the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the study, in the hall, in the living-room… He wandered from one room to the next and surveyed the boxes as if they were about to explode in his face. They looked threatening for some reason.

"I'm sure that box is very scared, Haymitch, but you can glare at it all you want it won't unpack by itself." Effie mocked from the other side of the living-room. She was kneeling next to the bookshelf, busy reorganizing all his shelves by alphabetic order so she could add her own books to his collection. She was efficient as always, half the boxes in the living-room had already been emptied and folded to be thrown out later.

The move had been months – if not years – in the making. The war had been over for five years and she had spent those five years coming and going between the Capitol and Twelve. A few months ago, she had started to drop hints that it would be easier for her to relocate if they intended to go on with their relationship. When he had simply shrugged and replied that it had always been up to her, he had never thought her moving in would involved that much… stuff. His wardrobe had already been overflowing with dresses and shoes, his bathroom was stocked with feminine products he wouldn't even look at and she had more or less reorganized his whole house. He had thought her moving in would simply mean she would show up one day with a suitcase and never leave again, but it was Effie Trinket and he really should have known better.

"It will be quicker if you help me." she pointed out, grabbing another box of books – why did she have that many books, she didn't even enjoy reading ? – to load them on the bookshelf. "We would have time for more enjoyable activities."

Her grin and her twinkling eyes promised him a treat and he smirked back. "Not exactly looking the part of the temptress here, sweetheart."

Her hair was tied up in a messy bun on the top of her head and she was wearing tight leggings and a yellow tunic that were far from her usual fashionable standards – moving apparently required sacrifice on the dressing front. She was also barefoot, her heels having gotten in the way at some point.

"You spent years criticizing my outfits and now that I am dressed in work-out clothes you are still not happy. Typical." she huffed. "Unload those boxes, Haymitch."

He rolled his eyes, muttered a "bossy" under his breath that warranted him a glare, but finally opened a box and very much tried to pretend it didn't feel like an invasion of his territory. Her movie collection was extensive and he was certain she would have it arranged alphabetically, divided in genres, sub-genres and probably years of release but Haymitch simply crammed everything in the TV console, regularly glancing over his shoulder to check she wasn't looking. She would find the mess eventually but it didn't have to be now.

The next box he opened was full of baubles and he grunted in annoyance at what looked like a collection of glass snowballs. There were at least twenty of them all more ridiculous than the next, some had miniatures of the Capitol in them, other fairytale castles or flowers…

"What do you want to do with those?" he asked, hoping against all odds that she would consent to trash them like the junk it was.

She was arranging a vase – a blue and yellow monstrosity – on the fireplace mantle. There were wrapped up paintings propped against the hall's walls and he was starting to get scared he would forever be forced to live in a house crammed with ugly things.

"Oh, I don't know…" she mused, chewing on her bottom lip. "Put them aside for now. Perhaps we can use them to brighten up the entrance."

He pushed the box in the darkest corner of the living-room, already plotting its tragic accident. She moved on to unwrapping the next vase – pink and green – pecking him on the mouth on her way to the unlucky piece of furniture she intended to use to 'exhibit' that particular monstrosity.

"I thought Capitols liked their place neat." he commented, astonished by all the knick-knacks she had accumulated over the years. He wasn't familiar with her apartment in the Capitol, he had been there twice before the war – always drunk – and barely a handful of times while they were awaiting Katniss' trial – and the place had been so thoroughly ransacked during the rebellion, she had still been trying to clear it out at the time. He had never put a foot back in the Capitol since Katniss' release, Effie had always been the one visiting.

Still, his memories of Capitol apartments were of straight lines, see-through materials and a neatness that bordered on impersonality. It felt like they were trying to compensate for it with bright and eccentric clothes but he did remember thinking more than once that Capitol people didn't quite fit in the decor.

"Are you lecturing me on tidiness?" she laughed, focused on finding the perfect place for her vase.

"I'm lecturing you on cluttering my house with stupid ugly things." he muttered, too low for her to hear. The next box he opened was heavy. He dragged it to the coffee table before slashing the tape open with his knife. "Hey, you forgot books."

He grabbed the one on top, it was big and square. There was no title and he realized only after opening it that it wasn't a book but a photo album. It was full of newspapers articles talking about Effie, pictures that had been cut out from fashion magazines with a particular care and then glued on the album's pages… He flipped through the pages. As far as he could tell, it started with her first jobs as a model and went on to her years as an escort. There were a few articles and pictures of the both of them on the last pages.

"Narcissist, much?" he snorted.

She glanced over her shoulder and her smile seemed to freeze on her mouth when she spotted the album in his hands.

"It belonged to my mother." she replied quietly, forcing her smile back in place. She fussed over the vase again but he could tell her mind wasn't in it anymore.

He didn't know a lot about her family. She had been guarded about it before the war and only more so after that. He only knew what she had told him : none of them had survived. He didn't know the particulars, if they had died during the Capitol bombings or of something else. He was a little afraid to ask.

"'Looks like she was proud of you." he ventured, sitting down on the couch to study some of the earliest articles about her. She had barely been seventeen on those pictures and the fashion magazines had already praised her, as young as she had been. It was odd to see her looking so innocent. He supposed she hadn't been much more older when she had started working for Twelve, twenty-three maybe, but he found he couldn't recall her so far back. He hadn't been paying enough attention to her, having her pegged for another Capitol drone. He had hated her guts at the time.

"Yes. I would rather have heard it from her lips than found out while I was packing her house to sell it but that was my mother in a nutshell." she snapped. "Have you seen the box with the curtains? I can't look at those horrid drapes of yours any longer."

He glanced at the curtains limply framing the windows and refrained from reminding her that she had been the one to choose them five years ago. He didn't think it was what was truly upsetting her anyway. There was another album very similar to the first but there were less articles and pictures, and they all came from gossip magazines rather than fashion periodicals or newspapers. He had never seen Effie's sister before and it was hard to make out any physical similitude with the heavy make-up. Still, her sister had been pretty.

He discarded both albums and reached for another one. He couldn't help but smirk when his hand closed on a glittery pink one that simply screamed Effie. It was full of stolen pictures from the last five years, taken during several of her visits. They were mostly of the kids or one of the kids with her, Haymitch disliked posing for cameras, but there were a few of him too. He suspected Peeta must have developed a taste for taking his and Effie's picture while they weren't looking.

"We should have some of those framed." he suggested, more to diffuse the sudden tension than because of any real interest. Although he would rather have theirs and the kids' pictures on the fireplace mantle than an ugly vase.

She looked up from her desperate search for curtains and her face softened. "I have some framed copies. Somewhere." She waved at the piles of boxes with a defeated expression and went back to her unpacking.

Haymitch perused the album slowly. There was a clear evolution between the pictures from five years earlier and the latest ones. Peeta was more relaxed, Katniss smiled more. Haymitch didn't have a bottle perpetually glued to his hand anymore…

He put the album aside and grabbed another one. That one was old, he saw it at once, and he was delighted to find babies pictures in it.

"Weren't you just cute." he snickered. "Look at you with your little pink diapers…"

She stopped checking boxes and came to sit next to him on the couch with a resigned sigh. "We will never make any progress if you insist on inspecting everything."

"Please." he snorted. "Baby pictures of you with pink diapers. You're never hearing the end of this, Princess."

"If you say so." she deadpanned, clearly humoring him.

He flicked through a few pages, amused by all the baby pictures of her, but the real gold mine was the toddler years pictures. There were a lot of them with some annotated comments in what he supposed to be her mother's handwriting. Some were cute: a two years old Effie and a five years old Lyssa having a tea party with a lot of dolls… Some were funny, he particularly liked the one of a four years old Effie with a crown on her head and fairy wings on her back, all bright blue eyes and bouncy blond curls. The wigs only appeared when she was five or six.

She good naturally replied to his teasing with some banter of her own but when she curled up against his side and rested her head on his shoulder, he thought she was more upset than she let on.

"You're okay?" he asked with a frown.

"I haven't looked at those in a while, that's all." she confessed quietly. "I'm fine. Go on."

He wrapped an arm around her and she burrowed against his side, sometimes commenting a particular picture but otherwise staying mostly silent. He tried to keep his taunting to a minimum – until he stumbled upon a photo of a seven years old Effie, in a puffy red riding dress, proudly grinning with her two front teeth missing, and tightly gripping the reins of…

"You had a fucking pony." he snickered.

"Language." she chided him. There was a pause and then she said, a little reluctantly: "I loved that pony."

"Such a Daddy's girl." he chuckled. "No wonder you're such a spoiled brat."

"I am not a spoiled brat." she huffed.

"Princess, you can't even drink wine if you don't have a wine glass, like a regular glass is going to attack you or some shit." he mocked.

"That doesn't make me a spoiled brat, that makes me an educated lady." she retorted. "It's not my fault you are such a ruffian, I did my best to teach you proper manners and I utterly failed."

"You're sure you can handle living in Twelve?" he teased. "'Cause I sure as hell don't have fancy wine glasses."

"Lucky for you, I do." she retorted. "And they need to be unpacked, so we should get a move on. We can't lounge on this couch all day." She closed the album and dropped it back in the box, pressing a lingering kiss against his lips when he started to protest. It was a trick and a dirty one because kissing the other to shut them up had always been his thing. "Up we go, Haymitch."

She bolted to her feet and clapped her hands to encourage him.

"That's how it's going to be for the rest of our lives, isn't it?" he sighed. "You're going to boss me around until my liver finally gives out."

"I like it when you're lucid, darling." she grinned.